


Mina's Wish

by kalypsobean



Category: Dracula Untold (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Crueltide, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:23:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2817050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is like him, and they speak their minds without words so that none other will know them. (Or, Vlad through Mirena's eyes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mina's Wish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nikiverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikiverse/gifts).



> Happy holidays to nikiverse! I hope you like your gift. I tried to include some things from your letter and build on the world a bit more.

_The Master moved freely in his acolyte's darkness; it blankets the world like a fog, smothering it until it cannot breathe, the clouds hanging heavily on the brink of rain. It is a beautiful time and yet she is more radiant, more perfect than the world itself. He parts her mouth and scratches his wrist above it._

_He watches as her eyes open; he helps her brush the dirt from her hair and her clothes._

_"My daughter," he says, "you shall see him again."_

 

~&~

 

Vlad returned a moral man, though one who still tended to violence as a first resort. She didn't know him then; he seemed to be calm and aloof, distanced from all that happened around him as if some invisible wall lay between him and the world outside the castle.

She married him after he decorated the fields with stakes and revealed his core to be as strong and as impassioned as that a folk tale hero, with a protective heart and an iron will. It was her parents' fervent wish that she marry up and raise them with her; when nobody else would take him, afraid of what he had done, she did not shy away. After all, he was a man who had killed to protect the lands he saw as his; he would kill to protect her, and she did not mind the feel of blood on her hands.

 

The marriage was a good one, for a while; he was attentive and kind, and if she had need of anything or even the vaguest desire for it, he made it possible. She wanted for nothing, and though a woman used to simple tastes, she could not think of anything that she missed, or that he could deny her. The nobles and the peasants and all the people in between saw her treated well, and they loved him more.

 

~&~

 

_"Come out of the sun," he says, and though she is newborn, she obeys. The sun scorches the field and he blocks his ears against the screams, the army dying in payment for their lack of control, for submitting to their base instincts in lieu of retaining their civility and their honour. She looks back, but he does not let her go._

_They reach the cave as the sun burns through the last of the cloud, sweeping away the last of the ash and anointing the ground behind them as new._

_"If any still live to draw breath, they will pay; you need not fear of that."_

_"There are none," she says, for she has faith in the acolyte, still. He teaches her to feed, and he locks her away._

 

~&~

 

Wallachia grew restive in its time of peace; Vlad spent more time in feasts and meetings, and riding from outpost to territory, than he did training his men. They were still able, but they were not hard. They lacked the edge that Vlad had, that edge around his form that made him seem as if he did not quite belong in the castle, amid rough stone and flames that burned safely within their sconces. He still trained, and the way he handled her had not changed; it was as if he suspected, now that he had a son, that tribute was only a matter of time and a foregone request. 

She did not know her brothers, and any daughter of hers would not have the same fate. He assured her of that, when they tried again; if he viewed her failure as a portent he was kind enough to keep it from her.

And yet, when the first signs of unrest came - a helmet in a stream, unusual tidings from the monastery, the villagers sending their children to the castle - he changed. He still showed her care, but she knew more from what he did not say than that which he did. He did not protect her now, for he was focused outward, as if he could see all that happened in his dominion and outside of it. She came second, and her role was within the castle; she knew war was inevitable, because he did not tell her that it was not. He vowed to protect her son, but he placed his life as the bond; he was not infallible, he was not inviolate, and he was asking her to prepare for the worst outcome that there was.

They said a lot of things that were unspoken, for they could not risk showing weakness when they did not know who they could trust. And then, he was gone.

 

~&~

 

_Her son stood, small and bent, as if the crown was too heavy for his head. She longed to go to him, but the Master held her back in the shadows, where she was a breeze, ruffling the rich tapestries._

_"He must learn this on his own; allow him his grief for the fire that will drive him."_

_She looks back but once, and she feeds on the harpies and vultures that look for scraps on the field of battle, a graveyard with no stones._

 

~&~

 

He came back and he would not eat, he did not sleep, and they turned on him; she knew he would not stop in his task, so she did not stop in hers, though they had turned on her too. They would not take her son while she still lived, and they would not hate him for his father's desperation.

And so she fell, and she screamed, knowing he would come back for her; their love had grown from necessity to alliance, and he did not turn his back on a friend. He was freed of politics now, allowed to act in the interests of Wallachia alone and give in to that part of him he had locked away in his heart and she had guarded with her touches and temperate counsel. 

She spoke to him as a mother and not as a queen, as his wife and not his partner; she appealed to what was left of him that took solace in bloodshed, that part of his soul that gave sharpness to his demeanour and gloried in the spoils of a warrior's life. They had nothing else left in common, no love of arts or stories, no shared quiet moments; this was their last, under the storm and the thunder of oncoming chariots, and there was nothing but vengeance and the desire above all things to shield their son from becoming like them, from having blood that roared underneath sedate clothing, from speaking in words they could not share.

He drank from her, and she held him as long as she could, like she could still hold him to her and keep him from walking the darkest of paths alone; though he would no longer be conflicted, they would no longer be bound. He summoned the thunder, and she closed her eyes to darkness; she breathed her last and it smelled like a smithy, of burnt metal and sweat.

 

~&~

 

_"It is time." The Master dresses her in the finest of modern clothes, and she feels as if she is going out into the new world for the very first time._

_"Let the games begin."_


End file.
